Chapter 18
I had always loved Sunday mornings as a child. Sunday mornings were my sleep in days. My only sleep in days. With school and club activities on all other days, I got a daily average of four to five hours of sleep. But on Sundays, I made up for it.
This Sunday was no different. I'd gotten used to the crappy curtains, and the light no longer bothered me (if it ever did, I just buried my face in my pillow (or sometimes Aya's neck, which was fun)), so I was able to enjoy a nice and long morning snooze. This Sunday, I woke up a few times because Aya was tossing restlessly in her sleep. When that happened, I put an arm over her like a metal bar and stopped her from moving around too much, drifting back into sleep easily. At eleven o'clock, I coughed myself awake. Something tickled the back of my throat, and I was jolted into the land of the conscious. I opened my eyes, a few tears having gathered around them during my convulsions, and I stretched my arms above my head, only to be greeted by a soft "good morning" from beside me.
Aya was on her side, her elbow on her pillow and her head propped up on her hand. She looked wide awake. She must have been waiting patiently for me to wake up. How kind!
"Morning," I replied cheerfully.
"Someone's unusually happy," Aya laughed.
I cocked my head to the side in thought. Was I being unusually happy? I guess Sunday morning sleep ins made me feel good. Life in Tokyo was going so well. I had a whole slew of friends, and I seemed to meet more every day. Also, waking up beside a devil in disguise wasn't too bad either. I grinned and said nothing in reply.
We lazed around for a good ten minutes, mostly keeping quiet but occasionally spouting out ideas about what to do in the afternoon.
"Aya," I whined.
"Hmm?"
"All our ideas sound like stupid date ideas. I don't want to go on a date with you."
"Um, okay. Sorry?" Aya said, sounding offended.
"Well, no, I didn't mean it in a bad way. Just... aren't we cooler?"
"What do you want to do, then?" she challenged.
I tried to think of something good. Something unique. Something like what we did in Hokkaido with the snow and the hills. I could think of nothing in Tokyo.
"I want to go play on a snowy mountain," I mumbled.
I thought I'd get teased, but instead, I got hugged.
"Do you miss your home?" she asked into my ear.
The truth was that I didn't miss Takikawa that much. I loved the abundant nature there, but in Tokyo there were far more things to do and ways to keep busy. I just missed the special kind of bond you could build when it was just you and another person all alone out in the middle of nowhere. You couldn't get that in the capital city. There was no "alone" outside of the house.
"No," I told her. "But I miss the sheep!"
"More than your parents?"
"My what?"
Aya laughed, and stopped quizzing me.
"Can we go somewhere today? Somewhere not so busy?" I asked, wondering if Aya knew of a place nearby.
She thought for a moment.
"I don't really hang out in the outskirts... but we could pick a train at random, ride it, and get off at the smallest station," she suggested.
I liked that idea!
And so we decided to do that. We got ready and walked over to the train station. The sky was grey, soft rain clouds starting to form over the city. I shivered a bit.
"Are you okay?" Aya asked.
I nodded, sticking my chin further into my jacket.
"I just get all these uncontrollable shivers when I'm around you," I replied jokingly, and she groaned.
Yes, it was a lame thing to say, but I was a lame person around Aya.
We took the train to Shinjuku station and then chose a number at random. The platform that shared the chosen number was the platform we'd wait on for the next train.
We ended up going to Saitama. I had been hoping we'd go anywhere but there, but as long as we were together, it didn't much matter where we went. Aya pulled us off at one of the less crowded stations, and we wandered up to the surface.
It was a nondescript city. It looked the same as all the others. And it was still cold. No rain fell, but the sky looked a shade darker than it had when we'd first left.
We wandered around, had coffee and a snack at a small café, and tried to find out what the local thing of interest was. Everyone we asked said there was nothing interesting in this town. They all looked tired and worn out, even the younger ones. They all wanted to leave their boring, ultimately unimportant town. I knew the feeling and sympathised with them.
The most interesting part of the day came when it started to snow. Not rain. Snow. And it snowed a lot. It started so subtly that it didn't even register in our minds that the white fluff falling from the sky was precipitation.
I smiled happily as we walked to the station to go back home. Even if we only got a thin layer that would melt the next day, it was enough to see everything covered in whiteness for an evening.
We hopped on the train and fell asleep on the ride home, arriving at the station in the late afternoon. When we stepped out of the train, we received a surprise. It hadn't stopped snowing. It had continued as we had slept, and there was definitely more than a thin layer of the powder on the ground. I shivered as the snow went down my neck, reminding myself to bring a scarf if we went out later that night.
We got back to her apartment and had to shake the snow off our jackets and clothes.
"I can't believe it. It hasn't snowed like this here in years," Aya mumbled as she hung her jacket up.
"I don't mind!" I laughed. "I wonder how long it'll keep up, though."
We turned on the heater, made tea, and then sat at the table. Half an hour of meaningless chatter later, Aya stretched her arms and then rubbed her stomach.
"I'm hungry," she declared.
"What should we prepare?" I asked.
She seemed to think a little too hard about the question, and I wanted to tell her to not worry too much. She went over to the kitchen and looked through the refrigerator and cupboards.
"Hey, Miki-chan," she said in a sweet voice, calling me over.
"Mmhmm?"
I went to join her in the kitchen.
"Would you mind doing me a big favour?"
I looked at her suspiciously, but I couldn't deny Aya a favour.
"What?"
"Could you go and pick some things up at the grocery store?"
Boring. Why couldn't we go together?
Regardless, I nodded.
"I need to review a script for tomorrow," she explained apologetically, "and I don't want to bore you and do it while you're around. That way we can both have something to do for the next while and we can spend the rest of the evening together."
I didn't care if she went off and had to memorise a script while I sat around doing something else, but I guess if she wanted to save on time, it would help her out a lot if I did the shopping.
"Okay!" I said with a perky smile.
She made a list of things she needed, and I put my shoes on, taking care to put on my scarf to prevent from being snowed out of my jacket. She saw me to the door, and then I was off to go shopping.
Some of the things on her list seemed so arbitrarily placed that I wondered if she'd actually meant to write them down. I ran around the store, however, and got everything she needed, plus some additional things I thought we could use. I paid, bagged my things, and scurried out in record time.
The snow was coming down hard and fast. The flakes were giant, and as I walked, I kicked up piles of the stuff up in front of me. It got into my shoes, and I cursed myself for not bringing warmer shoes to Tokyo. I didn't think it would snow this much down here.
I made it back home safely, and I walked in quietly as to not disturb Aya. I put the bag of groceries down on the kitchen floor and looked for the missing girl so that we could put the groceries away together. She wasn't in the living room, so I went to her bedroom. The door was open halfway, and I was about to call out to her and slide the door the rest of the way open when I heard something that made my heart stop.
"No, I sent her out to buy a long list of groceries. I had to talk to you. Your line's been busy till now."
She sent me out? Like a mother would a child? A master a servant? Who was she talking to? Why did she feel such an urge to talk to him or her without me around? Was it what it sounded like?
I did something I wasn't proud of, but that was necessary. I refrained from calling out to her and stood by the door listening. She obviously hadn't heard me come in, so here were her real thoughts.
"It's just... it's weird what happened yesterday. But you're not crazy. I'm not crazy."
Silence.
I got the impression that she was talking to Shibata. There was nobody else we had seen the previous day.
"Ah, yeah. I thought you'd figure it out."
Pause.
"Is that- is that okay? What do you think? I mean, it's kind of..."
Shibata must have figured things out just as Aya had predicted.
Aya breathed out a sigh of relief.
"I really do. She's... I don't know. Something else. Special. To me, at least. I can't even explain all the years of history..."
For one brief moment, I felt like laughing. Just like Aya to overdramatically jazz things up. More like months of history. Not years.
"Listen, just don't mention that, okay? I don't think I have a good way of telling her yet."
My ears picked that up nice and clearly.
Tell me what? Did Aya have some sort of deep, dark secret that I wasn't supposed to know? Something that she thought might make me hate her? But there was nothing that I thought could make me feel that way about her...
"She won't understand."
Understand what?
"No, I can't."
Can't what?
"You have one now? Okay. I'll call you later. Tomorrow. From work."
And before I knew it, the conversation was over and Aya was walking to the door. I panicked and turned around to run, but then thought it would look suspicious and turned right back around. Right smack into Aya.
She looked at me with a startled expression, and I tried my best to make it look like I'd just walked in.
"Hi!" I said in a voice that was a decibel too loud. "I'm back."
I could read the fright in her eyes. She was scared that I'd overheard her and that I'd be curious.
And you know what? I wasn't going to pretend. I was curious. I was more than curious. I was a little upset. Aya was finding excuses to send me out of the apartment while she had secret phone conversations about me. If she didn't want me around, she should have told me and I would have moved out. If living with me was too much to handle, I could understand that. But being so secretive and telling other people about it rather than me hurt.
"Hi," she greeted me nervously.
I dropped the fake cheerful look and replaced it with a serious one.
"Sorry, Aya-chan, but what's going on? I kind of heard some of that. If there's something you need to tell me, or if you want me out of your house, I'll leave. But I have to hear it from you."
Her faced darkened slightly. Was she angry at me for having listened to her conversation? Not my most shining moment, I'd admit.
"Miki, honestly, there's nothing you have to worry about. I definitely don't want you to move out."
I crossed my arms, refusing to take that excuse. She was avoiding the question again.
"That was Shiba-chan, wasn't it?"
She made no sound to indicate I was wrong.
"What is it with you two? What did you tell her about me? What's this thing you have to say to me?"
My questions sounded like machine gun fire. She let me ask them and then took me by the arm, leading me to the couch. She pointed to it.
"Sit," she commanded.
For some reason, I felt compelled to follow her instructions. I felt like I was about to get some sort of answer out of her. I sat down and waited. She stood a few metres away and in front of me.
And then she began to speak. At first I thought she was reminiscing about how we met, which threw me off guard and made me feel warm inside, but her words took another path, and I listened in disbelief as she told me things I could never have imagined.
"Something strange happened a few months ago."
She paused. What an enigmatic statement. I wondered what sort of story she was going to tell me. She looked serious, so I, too, kept a serious expression on my face.
"At the end of October, as you know, I was supposed to fly out to Italy and start some special training, but I bailed out of the project. I told you the reason I did that was because I couldn't stand the thought of being away for three months and that I wanted more control and a bit of a rest. That's all true, but I didn't tell you the main reason."
The main reason? I thought curiously.
"The main reason I didn't go was because of you."
I was confused. Now there was a paradox.
"But Aya, you didn't even know me yet," I laughed lightly.
She didn't laugh along.
"But I did. Up until the morning of the twenty-sixth of October, a girl named Fujimoto Miki existed in my life. Years ago, she came to Tokyo as the result of earning a soloist spot in Hello! Project after being denied entry into the group she originally auditioned for. She - you - and I became best friends, and then some time later, even more. Just like how we are now."
Her sentences came one after another, and I didn't know whether to giggle insanely at the joke or to tease her first and ask her if she was feeling all right. Something, however, made me stay silent and let her continue without showing any reaction.
She talked a bit about my time as a soloist, about meeting her, about being put into Morning Musume, about graduating and then leaving the Project and then about becoming the star of the U-Con record label.
"While you were still in Momusu, You came to visit me at a concert. It was my nineteenth birthday. You came bearing gifts and confessions. And from that moment on, we were inseparable. Until, of course, the day I was supposed to leave for Italy."
I shook my head the slightest bit as I listened.
What the hell was she going on about??
"Huh?" I asked, begging for her to continue.
"That morning, I woke up beside you as usual. We technically didn't live together, but we were usually together most days of the week."
I nodded once helplessly to acknowledge that I'd heard her.
"I fell back asleep, and when I woke up again, you were gone."
I scratched my ear nervously.
"Washroom?" I asked in a joking tone, although I didn't feel like laughing at all, for she looked far too serious.
"You completely disappeared from the world. Everybody who had known you no longer knew who you were. They'd never heard your name before. All my pictures of you were replaced by different pictures. In your place there were other friends of mine. Even in the public eye, Shiba-chan became my best friend, not you. My past even changed without my knowing it. I had done work with people when I'd really done that work with you. Performances and films. That sort of thing. So that's why I didn't go to Italy. Because in the space of about an hour, my world was not just turned upside down, but torn into pieces."
I stared at her. She was serious. Dead serious. I felt a dull throbbing at the back of my head that I hadn't noticed before.
"I couldn't stand the thought of you having disappeared, so I tried every way to contact you, and when all those failed, I took a plane up to Hokkaido and found you. It was by chance that I went to that restaurant, but it happened. Even though you didn't really know who I was, I wanted to get to know you. That's why I stayed up there for two months. I tried to leave you because I knew that you had your own life and I was just intruding, but when you latched on to me and made me let you stay with me that night, I realised I could never leave you. I was too selfish. So I let you come down here with me, knowing that somehow you'd do well."
She stopped talking, and the first thing I thought was: I wonder if she rehearsed saying all that beforehand.
The second thing I thought was: How hard did she bang her head before I came back?
"Aya-chan..." I started, thinking over my words carefully through my growing headache. "What the hell are you talking about? Why are you making up weird stories? I just wanted to know what you and Shiba-chan were talking about."
She seemed to wake up at the sound of my questions.
"The only person I've told this to is Shiba-chan. She thought I was crazy at first, but once I went up to Hokkaido and found you, she didn't know what to believe. What's more, when I took you to her place, the reason why she may have acted strangely at first was because she recognised you. While you were in the washroom, she told me that she'd been overcome with a frightening feeling of familiarity when she saw your face. She was trying to figure out why this was."
I drew in a shaky breath. This was starting to get weird. It wasn't just Aya now. It was Shibata, too. Were they trying to play some joke on me? If I called Shibata, would she confirm this crazy story just so they could get their kicks?
No. They wouldn't do that. They would never go that far to tease me. There was a boundary line between respect and disrespect that they would not cross
"And it's not just Shiba-chan. You've been noticing it, haven't you, Miki?"
She pierced me with an all-knowing gaze, and I frowned. Noticing what??
"People haven't been acting quite normal around you. People stare at you in the streets. Yes, you're beautiful, but it goes a bit deeper than that. It's because they recognise you but can't quite place you. It's like the memory has been buried so far back in their minds that they can't dig it out, only tug at a small corner of it. People like Ohashi and Kuniko from U-Con hated you on sight because back in that other world, you were rivals. They must have felt that when they met you. Tsuyoshi felt the need to protect you at the club not because you were some defenceless girl about to get beaten up but because the kid worked for you as your secretary. Even those boys staring at you when we went to the hot springs at the beginning of the year. They were staring because they somehow knew you were as famous as I was, but couldn't quite remember how."
Too much information. Too much information. What did this all mean?
Yes, I had felt strange vibes coming from many of the people I'd been meeting, but I had thought it was a Tokyo thing, not because of some ridiculous science fiction concept of multiples of the same people existing and dimension hopping and-
"Are you out of your mind?" I asked Aya calmly.
"I know it's hard to believe it, but please. If you don't believe me, call up Shiba-chan and ask her. Call up the number of people I phoned the day after you disappeared, asking them if they knew who Fujimoto Miki was. Some of them are bound to remember me saying the name."
I sat, still as a stone statue.
Aya was talking crazy, but I believed her somehow. She had no reason to lie to me. No reason to make up ridiculous stories like this. And the more I thought about it, the more I was remembering incidents where people had mistaken me for someone else or stared at me unabashedly on the streets.
"What, um..." I swallowed and tried to wet my throat. "What's this other Miki like?"
Aya came a few steps forward and then manoeuvred herself to sit beside me.
"You and the other Miki are essentially the same person. A few different habits and strengths since you were partially brought up in different environments. She's just like you. She looks exactly like you. Talks just like you. Sings like you."
I began to grow wary of this whole situation. If Aya was telling the truth and she knew a superstar Miki, did that mean when she'd lost that superstar, she'd come up to find me to replace her? Was I a replacement? Was that why I was here with her now? To provide her comfort by being someone that looked exactly like that someone in her memory?
She tried to put a hand on my leg, but I twitched away, pulling back from her.
"I know that you're probably weirded out-"
"Weirded out isn't even close to what I'm feeling right now," I said in a low voice, reigning my anger in and trying to stay calm.
"And I'm sorry that I didn't tell you the whole truth before, but you would have thought I was cra-"
"You are crazy," I stated, and she looked at me in surprise.
"I thought you trusted me," she said in a dejected voice. "I thought it made sense to you."
"I don't mean about this 'other Miki' thing. I don't even want to talk about that. But... no matter who it was, how could you do this to me? How could you use me like this?"
"Use you?"
Her face was twisted in a genuine expression of confusion, and I laughed darkly at it.
"To replace that other person," I clarified.
Her jaw dropped.
"I didn't replace anybody. I just thought that you could come here and-"
"And what? Take her place? In most circles, that's commonly referred to as replacing," I bit back.
"But I thought you had the potential."
I let that word run through my head before replying.
Potential.
Potential.
"So let me get this straight. The only reason you like me now is because in your other reality - or whatever - I was also a famous celebrity? You brought me down here to mould me into that girl? If I'd just been some regular girl off the street, you wouldn't have cared?"
This is not happening. This is not happening. This can't be happening...
"No, that's not it!" she cried out defensively.
"Whatever!" I yelled at her, sick of her excuses. "Just shut up and leave me alone."
I stalked off to the bedroom and started to pack up my things.
"Where are you going?" she asked in an alarmed tone.
I didn't bother to organise anything properly, simply shoving it into the bag folded or unfolded.
"I'm getting the hell away from you."
She walked up to me and tried to touch me, but I shoved her hand away violently.
"All you've done is use me. To make yourself feel good or powerful or... who the hell knows? You're some sort of insane, perverted freak with serious issues," I spat at her.
I slung my bag over my shoulder, pushed past her, and went to put my shoes on.
"You can't leave, Miki. It's dark already and there's a snowstorm," she insisted in a last, desperate attempt.
"I don't care about the dark or the snow. Weren't you paying attention to me and our activities in Hokkaido? Or were you too busy plotting how to get me in your bed and make me famous to notice we were hiking up mountains in fucking blizzards?!"
I yelled this out to her, yanked the door open, and pushed my way out. Before the door closed, I reached into my pocket, grabbed the spare key that was there, and threw it on the floor of the entrance. Without another word, I let go of the door and walked off to the stairs. The door swung shut automatically, making a loud slamming sound as nobody tried to slow it down.
I raced down the stairs, too angry even to see straight. I'd been living through some sort of lie for the past four months. Aya had been lying to me since the first day she met me. Now I had no place to stay. I'd been close to saving enough money to start renting my own apartment, but I'd been so tempted to keep living with her that I'd been hoping she'd offer again.
Plans had changed so suddenly.
I had to call someone, but I didn't know who. The one person I was supposed to be able to trust implicitly had ended up being a liar. I ran all the way down the stairs, not stopping for a breath until I was at the bottom. After catching my breath, I forged my way out.
The wind almost blew me over, snow hitting my face as I walked through the storm towards the train station. I was so cold. I hadn't had time to bundle up properly, so I had no hat and no gloves, and my jacket wasn't even zipped up. After ten minutes, I got to the station, my face wet with snow that had melted after hitting it. I brushed as many snowflakes off of me as possible and then took out my phone, looking through my address book.
I didn't have that many people I could call in Tokyo. Aya was out of the question since she was the person I was escaping from. There was Kuniko, who was probably the person I could trust most at that moment, but she'd ask too many questions and I didn't want to talk about it. There was the Koda group from 7-Eleven, but I wasn't particularly close to any of them. Then there were my two bosses. No freaking way. And then Tsuyoshi. I wanted to call him.
What am I thinking? I reprimanded myself. He's a nineteen year old boy and he lives with his parents. We have nothing in common.
Just a few hours ago, I'd been rejoicing over the amount of friends I'd made since moving to this new city. Out in the cold darkness, I felt completely alone. I had nobody I could turn to. In the end, all I had was myself. I could only rely on me.
But the amount of confidence in my own judgement that I'd just lost was staggering. I had completely misjudged Aya and let myself be caught in her web of sweet words and mushy feelings, no clue as to what her true motives had been. But even though now that I had a clearer picture of why she'd been so nice to me, I still couldn't get over her. I felt like I'd been betrayed. I was upset because I still liked her. Quite a lot, in fact, and that was just wrong. Nobody should like someone who had been revealed to be so twisted. The spell should have been broken, but I still found myself wanting to close my eyes and forget everything she'd said in the last thirty minutes.
I wandered around the station for a few minutes, not going inside. Where would I go? There was nowhere in the city I knew better than here. There were still a few hours until the station closed. I had some time to think about my plan of action. Afraid that Aya might come out searching for me, I walked fifteen minutes in the opposite direction of her apartment and found a family diner that was open until one in the morning. I sat down in it and ordered the all-you-can-drink special, wishing it was alcohol, not tea and carbonated drinks.
It felt vaguely familiar to sit in a booth with my cold oolong tea. The last time I'd sat alone at a family restaurant, I'd been in Takikawa, sulking over my break up with Hiroshi and my mistake of sleepwalking right into his bed. Nakanoko-chan had happened upon me, though, and I'd felt better to at least have someone around who cared. This time, there was nobody who would walk by to help me. Nobody could understand the situation. Nobody would believe it. Not even I could believe it.
I shivered, wishing they'd turn up the heating a little, and I sat in silence, the people around me seeming to keep their voices hushed in deference to me and my suffering. Growing frustrated with my own thoughts, I rummaged through my bag and brought out a book that I'd packed. It was a paperback detective thriller that I'd bought with the money my mother had sent me for my birthday. I'd read it once already, but it would do no harm to read it again. To distract myself, I started from the first page and read my way through steadily.
The next time I looked up from it, it was ten minutes to one, and a waitress was hovering near my table as if urging me telepathically to leave so that she could clean up and leave on time from her shift. Startled at the time, I made a quick trip to the washroom and then went to pay my bill. I rushed over to the train station and was downcast to see that the trains had stopped. Not that I had thought of a plan, but with the closing of the station, my options were severely limited, and I didn't like that feeling. I sat outside the station, a few other unfortunate souls nearby. They eventually got up and left.
It was freezing cold and still snowing. My body didn't feel the cold anymore, though. I was numb. I had grown so used to it that I was actually sweating a little, my jacket still undone. I hadn't even bothered to put on my hat and gloves even though they were sitting in my bag.
I sat on the cold, wet ground and thought for a long time. I reviewed the past four months in detail. I tried to analyse every moment I'd spent with that wretched girl. The girl that had tricked me unfairly and displaced me from my home, making me think that I had a place where I belonged down here in this city. The girl that had come between me and my potential fiancé. The girl that had just... done everything to me. Everything bad. And everything good.
When I looked at my watch, it was two. I took my phone out and flipped it open. Aya had called me once and left no message. She'd also e-mailed me asking where I was. I ignored the message and put my phone away. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall. It wasn't the safest place to be at night, but I had nowhere else to go. I was homeless until the trains started up at some time around five.
I should go back home. Back to Takikawa, I thought over and over again.
As I grew sleepy, it struck me as odd that I would have to repeat that to myself. As if I had to convince myself it's what I wanted. Try as I might, though, I couldn't shake the feeling of dread that I got from the thought of returning to that town. I shivered, but I didn't know whether it was from fear of returning to my hometown or from the snow creeping down my neck.
I fell asleep.
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(ChiruChaCha: one would think you're spying on me/my hard drive.)
Topic: Restart (Love x ∞ Part II) (Read 84312 times)